Sheltering: Genevieve Hudson on Queerness, Defying Genre, and the Deep South
On the final episode of Sheltering, Maris Kreizman speaks with Genevieve Hudson about her recent novel, Boys of Alabama. Hudson talks about the Deep South, where she grew up, and the culture one finds there: the religion-like following of football, biscuits with honey, and white masculinity, to name a few. She also speaks about the process of writing without genre, and the inherent queerness in defying limitations. Hudson’s favorite local bookstore is Thank You Books in Birmingham, Alabama. Please purchase Boys of Alabama through their online store or through Bookshop.
From the episode:
Genevieve Hudson: This book, as you were saying, sits on the edge of a lot of genres. It’s magic realism, and a coming of age story, and about finding your queer self. It’s also a commentary on religion and the South. And that was a response I got, when people first came into contact with the book, is that it’s doing a lot of things. I think that’s what people find exciting about it, because it’s pushing into all these different spaces. It’s also a very queer book and that inclination to defy genres, to push against binary, has some queerness to it, because it’s saying I am all these things, I am going to explore all these facets of myself and elements of culture, and not stay inside one tiny box.
